Protocardia subquadrata

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ProtocardiaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Cardiidae
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Cardiidae
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Cardiidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
10 occurrences of Protocardia subquadrata on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
10 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
4 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Protocardia subquadrata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Protocardia subquadrata and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Protocardia subquadrata and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
156 taxa- Cymbophora warrenana8 sites
- Phelopteria linguaeformis8 sites
- Nucula planomarginata6 sites
- Oxytoma (Hypoxytoma) nebrascana6 sites
- Crenella elegantula5 sites
- Glossus moreauensis5 sites
- Inoceramus5 sites
- Malletia evansi5 sites
- Modiolus galpinianus5 sites
- Nucula cancellata5 sites
- Tenuipteria fibrosa5 sites
- Anomia gryphorhyncha4 sites
- Cucullaea nebrascensis4 sites
- Cuspidaria ventricosa4 sites
- Dosiniopsis deweyi4 sites
- Goniomya americana4 sites
- Grammatodon (Cosmetodon) sulcatinus4 sites
- Leptocardia borealis4 sites
- Nuculana (Jupiteria) scitula4 sites
- Nymphalucina occidentalis4 sites
- Pseudoptera subtortuosa4 sites
- Solemya subplicata4 sites
- Tellinimera scitula4 sites
- Acanthoscaphites3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Protocardia subquadrata, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
4 references- Geology of the Southern Alberta Plains. Part II. Paleontology of the marine formations of the Montana Group5
- Unpublished data on Cretaceous-Paleocene molluscan assemblages2
- Scaphitid ammonites of the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Fox Hills Formation in South Dakota and Wyoming2
- Palaeontology of the Bearpaw Formation1
Each of the 10 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Protocardia subquadrata
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Protocardia subquadrata was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itProtocardia through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Evans and Shumard 1857)